


Relics of a Bygone Age

by Phosphorescent



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Ord Cestus, Post-Star Wars: A New Hope, Pre-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Legends references, obi-wan isn't actually in this fic but he's still a central character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 15:26:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8290855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phosphorescent/pseuds/Phosphorescent
Summary: Luke froze. Something about his intent stillness put her in mind of a massiff that had just caught the scent of its prey.“Ben,” he said, softly but audibly. "That's Ben."





	

**Author's Note:**

> The image below is from [this post](http://kyloxrens.tumblr.com/post/151763920576/anyway-this-giant-jedi-statue-looks-like-obi-wan) (which is, of course, from the most recent Rogue One trailer), and was the inspiration for this fic.

 

 

* * *

  _I met a traveller from an antique land_  
_Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone_  
_Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,_  
_Half sunk, a shattered visage lies [...]_  
_Nothing beside remains. Round the decay_  
_Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare_  
_The lone and level sands stretch far away._

_\- "Ozymandias", by Percy Bysshe Shelley_

* * *

 

_1 ABY_

 

Ord Cestus. 

An endless expanse of desert.

An endless expanse of emptiness.

Nothing but fine red sand and craggy juttings of rock, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Leia Organa sighed, brushing an errant lock of hair from her sweaty forehead.

“How much farther didja say we had to walk?” The familiar drawl belonged to Han Solo. “Cause Chewie’s not built for this kinda climate.”

Chewbacca let out a grumble of amused agreement.

“Yet unlike yourself, Chewbacca has yet to complain, Captain Solo,” Leia said tartly.

“It shouldn’t be long now,” Luke Skywalker said, seemingly eager to break up the beginnings of an argument. “Sorry about the heat, Chewie. I guess I forgot most folks aren’t used to it.” 

“That’s right, you grew up on a desert planet, didn’t you?” Leia said.

“Tatooine,” Luke said, nodding as he strode through the sand. “I used to think it was the one planet farthest from the center of the universe, but I’ve gotta say, Cestus is giving it some competition right now. What _happened_  here, anyway?”

“What else? The Empire,” Leia said. “ChikatLik was Cestus’ capital – the biggest city on the planet. When its inhabitants refused to accept a shift in government, well… you saw the city ruins a few klicks back.”

Chewbacca nodded and let out a low whine.

“The Empire crushed ‘em,” Han translated, tone matter-of-fact. 

“And left ChikatLik’s remains as a warning to the rest of the planet,” Leia added grimly.

Luke suddenly jerked to a halt.

“Luke? What is it?” Leia asked.

“I just… doesn’t that outcropping look an awful lot like a person to you?”

He pointed a finger towards a rock formation in the distance to their left.

“Kid, _all_  rocks start to look like specific things if you wander around long enough,” Han said.

“I _know_  that,” Luke said impatiently. “I think I’ve spent more time in deserts than you, Han. I’m not seeing things. …I don’t think I am, anyway.”

Leia squinted against Cestus’ bright sun, a hand above her eyes.

“No, he’s right,” she said slowly. “It _does_  look like a person. And there’s something about it that can’t quite put my finger on… it’s odd…”

“Almost like you’ve seen it before, yeah?” Luke said eagerly.

She frowned.

Now that he’d said it, she realized that that was  _exactly_  how she felt. 

“But I’ve never been to Cestus before,” she said. “I’d remember.”

“Well, let’s go check it out,” Luke said. “We’ve still got plenty of time before we’re supposed to meet up with our contact.”

“I don’t know, Luke,” she said, duty warring with curiosity. “We can’t afford to get lost. We _need_  that intelligence.”

“It’s not _that_  far out of our way,” Luke said.

Common sense told her that she shouldn’t give in, but she _did_  want to solve this particular mystery…

“Hey, do Chewie and I get a vote?” said Han. “Cause I vote we don’t walk any more than we hafta.”

Chewbacca snorted and said something in a growl.

“Why, you _traitor_ ,” Han said, looking comically offended.

“That’s two to one so far,” Luke said cheerfully. “Leia?”

“…oh, why not,” she conceded.

And although she would never admit it, in the end, the thing that had pushed her into agreement was the look she _knew_  was going to appear on Han’s face.

_Hah. Yes. That one._

He looked as though he’d bitten into a stewfruit.

She smirked internally.

There was something just so _satisfying_ about riling him up sometimes. Giving him a taste of his own medicine, as it were. It was petty, perhaps, but she had to take her amusements where she could get them, these days.

"You planning on joining us, Princess?"

_Fark_.

She hurried her steps to catch up to them.

 

_Some time later…_

Four figures stood in silence, dwarfed by the object before them.

“Well, that explains why it looked like a person,” Han said at last, voice dry.

The ‘outcropping’ wasn’t an outcropping at all. It was a  _statue_. A _huge_  statue. The Millennium Falcon could have easily fit into it… many, _many_ times over. 

It was a statue of a Jedi.

A chill went down her spine.

Felled this statue might be, weathered and worn, crumbling and half buried by Cestus’ shifting sands… but it was still awe-inspiring; a reminder of another age, tragic in its derelict grandeur.

Luke froze. Something about his intent stillness put her in mind of a massiff that had just caught the scent of its prey.

“ _Ben_ ,” he said, softly but audibly.

It took a second for the meaning behind the word to register, and then she just felt pity for him. 

Luke had a way of finding General Kenobi in _everything_. He still insisted that he had heard the dead Jedi’s voice, both before he'd made his final run on the Death Star and when he had confronted Vader for the first time. And maybe he had… but Leia thought it more likely that they had been hallucinations brought on by adrenaline, grief, and wishful thinking.

The statue before them  _did_  resemble the Clone Wars holos her father had shown her of the General. But –

“I’m sure there were hundreds of bearded humanoid Jedi,” she told Luke gently.

He waved her statement off with a flick of a hand. 

“Look at the shape of the nose,” he insisted. “Look at that mouth. Look at how the beard is trimmed. That’s Ben, I _know_ it is.”

Chewbacca let out a howl.

“Yeah, I see it, I see it, no need to get your fur matted.” Han turned to them and said, “As much fun as this little debate is, there’s an inscription on it. Why don’t you just read _that_?”

Leia blinked. Now that Han had pointed it out, she felt rather stupid for not noticing it before.

Luke perked up. "There’s an inscription?”

“Yeah, at the base of the statue. Can’t make out the words from this distance, though,” Han said.

Luke whipped a pair of macrobinoculars from his hip pouch and put them to his eyes, presumably narrowing in on the inscription.

“Well, it’s still hard to make out,” he said. “The sand and wind have done a real number on it and – it looks like there are chisel marks too.”

“The Empire,” Leia said. “They wouldn’t want anyone to be able to read it.”

“You know,” Luke said, making another adjustment with his macrobinoculars. “I don’t think this is written in Standard. It’s the same alphabet symbols, but they’re arranged differen– Wait… I think I have something…!”

For a few seconds, there was no sound but the faint howling of the wind. Then:

“Looks like half a _K_ , then _E_ \- _N_ \- _O,_  pretty sure that’s a  _B_?… and the rest of it is completely worn off.”

He lowered the macrobinoculars triumphantly.

“It’s gotta be ‘Kenobi’. What else could the word be?”

There were several other words that it could be, not counting the ones available in whatever language the inscription was written, but when taken in context… 

“I’m sure you’re right, kid,” Han said, clapping him on the back. “Now let’s go meet that Alliance contact so we can get out of here, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Luke said, reluctantly throwing the statue a final glance. “What do you think, Leia?”

“I think,” she said, nudging his shoulder with her own, “that it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there were statues of General Kenobi. He _was_  a famous war hero, after all. Your father probably had some too.”

“Really?” He brightened. “Huh. Maybe I’ll find another one someday, then. Just… I never realized they were that big a deal, you know?”

“Big deal? If that crazy old wizard actually was  _Obi-Wan Kenobi_ , then you have _no_ idea,” Han said.

And as they turned around and began the trudge to the meeting spot, Han started to spin a story for Luke, tone three parts scornful to one part veiled wistfulness:

“They were the Negotiator and the Hero with No Fear, and we all knew that as long as they were around, everything was going to be all right…”

* * *

_  
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,_  
_And our hearts, though stout and brave,_  
_Still, like muffled drums, are beating_  
_Funeral marches to the grave._

_[...]_

  _Lives of great men all remind us_  
_We can make our lives sublime,_  
_And, departing, leave behind us_  
_Footprints on the sands of time;_

_Footprints, that perhaps another,_  
_Sailing o'er life's solemn main,_  
_A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,_  
_Seeing, shall take heart again._

_\- "A Song of Life", by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a loooong time since I read _The Cestus Deception_ , so please forgive any inaccuracies herein. I know that as of TCW, the X'Ting "wrote" using scents rather than symbols, but who is to say that the engraving on the statue wasn't originally in more than one language, hmmm? (Especially since I invented the fact that it has any writing at its base at all lol.) Why is there a statue of Obi-Wan there? Well, it was obviously commissioned by a grateful populace in commemoration of his heroics, but you can use your imagination for anything more specific than that. Similarly, you can decide whether the events of _The Cestus Deception_ happened in this universe or not. ;-)


End file.
